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+18 +4
European Trademark Office Says Pinterest Doesn’t Own ‘Pinterest’
Pinterest raised a $225 million round in October 2013 to help fuel its international expansion, but a recent ruling in Europe could prove to be a hiccup in that strategy. The U.S.-based social networking site has lost a challenge it made to claim the Pinterest trademark in the region, with a European trademark court ruling in favor of the current owner, a London-based social news aggregation startup called Premium Interest and its founder Alex Hearn.
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+24 +4
Kim Dotcom: The Man Behind Megaupload
In October 2013, VICE News was invited to visit the infamous tech mogul and creator of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, at his palatial property in New Zealand. Even though Kim is under house arrest—since he's at the center of history's largest copyright case—he's still able to visit a recording studio in Auckland. So check out this brand new documentary we made at Kim's mega-mansion.
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+13 +1
The Top 10 Library Stories of 2013
PW takes a look back at 10 big library stories of 2013, and a look ahead to what might be on the horizon in 2014.
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+15 +2
Developer Reveals Details Of Ubuntu Torrent Search Tool
Canonical is working to enable its OS to search torrents by default. The torrent scope will be included in Ubuntu by default, currently relies on the Pirate Bay
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+12 +2
Kanye serves Coinye with cease and desist, alleging infringement
Kanye West may not be as easygoing as you thought. On Monday, lawyers working for West delivered cease and desist letters to the coders responsible for Coinye, according to a report in The Wall...
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+17 +7
50,000 Call to Free Pirate Bay Founder as Court Extends Custody
Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm appeared in court today and had his custody extended to February 5. Meanwhile, a petition to free the Pirate Bay founder, or at minimum improve his current conditions, swelled to more than 50,000 signatories. Svartholm is suspected of several hacking-related crimes in Denmark, where he is being kept in solitary and without free access to mail or his books.
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+27 +4
Kindle Führer: “Mein Kampf” Tops Amazon Charts
E-book versions of Hitler's opus are rising in the rankings on Amazon and iTunes. What gives? You won’t see Adolf Hitler peering back at you from the featured display tables at Barnes & Noble any time soon. But browse the most popular e-book stores these days and Der Führer’s mug is seemingly unavoidable.
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+8 +1
Viewing Pirated Streams is Not Illegal, German Govt Says
The controversial RedTube case in Germany has provoked an interesting response from the Ministry of Justice. Although it says the question will ultimately be answered by the European Court, the Ministry says that it believes the mere viewing of copyright infringing streams is not illegal under current law.
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+19 +6
Dotcom sets sights on politics
Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom will launch a new political party later this month, with one expert tipping it could help determine the makeup of the next government. Dotcom resigned from his director's position at his data hosting site, Mega, last year to focus on his extradition case and building a political party.
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+19 +4
City Of London Police Cannot Seize Domains Just Because Hollywood Says The Websites Are Infringers
Last fall, we noted that the City of London Police, who had just set up a special "intellectual property crime unit" which appeared to be taking orders directly from Hollywood, had issued bizarre orders to registrars, based on no court order or ruling, that they hand over domain names to the police, point them to a splash page that advertised Hollywood-approved businesses, and block the transfer of those domains to anyone else.
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+10 +1
Supreme Court to Hear Aereo Case
The Supreme Court will hear broadcasters’ challenge to the legality of startup Aereo, in a case that may determine not only the future of digital streaming of station signals but of network television itself.
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+17 +2
FOX Bankrupted a 23-Year-Old Canadian Pirate for Running a 'Simpsons' Streaming Site
We talked to Nick, the 23-year-old man who was ordered to pay FOX $10.5 million dollars for running websites such as "Watch The Simpsons Online."
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+19 +3
What the 1984 Betamax ruling did for us all
Thirty years ago, the Supreme Court declared that Sony could continue to sell its Betamax videocassette recorder, a triumph for both consumers and copyright owners.
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+28 +5
King has trademarked the word CANDY (and you're probably infringing)
When you have an intellectual property – especially one that’s worth millions of dollars – you want to protect it. But can such protections ever go too far? That’s the question a lot of industry watchers are asking this morning, as developers far and wide whose games include the word ‘candy’ are getting emails from Apple on behalf of King, the makers of Candy Crush Saga.
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+28 +4
IP address does not prove online piracy, US judge says in landmark ruling
A US federal judge in Washington wrote that a suspected internet pirate should not be prosecuted solely because his computer's IP address was identified by a film studio. The landmark opinion may tip the fortunes of defendants in similar situations.
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+14 +2
35% Of All Pirate Bay Uploads Are Porn
Every month tens of thousands of new torrent files are added to The Pirate Bay, but what content do these files point to? New data shows that with 44%, most of these uploads point to copies of TV-shows and movies. Porn comes in second place with roughly a third of all uploads, up from one in ten a few years ago. The percentage of music uploads, on the other hand, is declining steadily, with audio only making up just 9% of all new files added today.
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+10 +5
Quentin Tarantino Suing Gawker Over Leaked 'Hateful Eight' Script
Quentin Tarantino has filed a copyright lawsuit against Gawker Media for allegedly facilitating the dissemination of copies of his unproduced script, The Hateful Eight.
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+16 +2
Dutch ISPs drop Pirate Bay blocks after court rules them 'ineffective'
The Netherlands has been at the forefront of battling online piracy through the enforcement of banning orders on internet service providers, and now the country's also leading the way in admitting that the strategy is not as effective as had been hoped.
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+19 +4
Why The Copyright Industry Is Doomed, In One Single Sentence
In my last column about public libraries and the many parallels with online sharing of knowledge and culture, an unexpected gem surfaced in the comments. The most fundamental reason the copyright monopoly is harmful keeps being forgotten in details and irrelevancies about business models, so we must keep reminding ourselves of it, and keep reminding others of it.
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+16 +4
Judge Understands BitTorrent, Kills Mass Piracy Lawsuits
In the U.S. roughly half a million people have been sued for sharing copyrighted files in recent years, but filing of mass-lawsuits is not getting easier. A federal judge in Iowa has just issued a key order which makes mass-BitTorrent piracy lawsuits virtually impossible. The judge ruled that copyright holders can’t join multiple defendants in one suit, since there is no proof that they shared files with each other.
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